Completeness

How do I interpret completeness of life? Completeness has a profound meaning in Buddhism. However, I want to see completeness as something simpler, that is to discover our inadequacy in life, and to make improvement to ourselves. Just like when there is light, there is shadow, or the complete cycle of a day that consists of the day time and the night. The completeness of life to me superficially is about to play the roles as children, as brothers and sisters, as parents or as friends as we going through different stages in life. In a more elaborate understanding, and to refer from Lun Yu*, is to have the heart of care and love for any old or young one by taking them as our own elders, or children. Completeness as in the personal entity, is about to break free from our own pride, prejudice, and ignorance. We like things that we deemed beautiful, like a pretty child, or a person who is handsome or beautiful. In completeness sense, the question is how can we assess various characteristics of a person in a just way, and to give these characteristics the credit as much as their appearance. On top of these assessments, ultimately is about our heart being opened to them by considering them as our loved one. Completeness to me is not about being perfect, but being able to see the imperfections in us. We need to embrace imperfections in us, so that we know that we can become a better person in each and everyday. To me, life is an adventure about self discovery. What do you think?

I have in fact written one but not exactly about it (I have to revise it may be one last time), is a follow up of another post that I have posted. Achieving completeness to me is very much related to forgiving others. I think making self improvement does not mean achieving perfectness, but instead to achieving understanding of self, and therefore we love and care about others. Flaws, to me has a deeper sense of meaning in human kind. Lazy is a flaw, poor and unsuccessful is a flaw, low IQ is a flaw, but it is just part of a bigger picture. We need to see the whole thing. Flaw can exist in another way, rich and successful might breed extreme self ego, arrogance etc. Autism child has problem in social communication and might be consider a flaw, but with the understanding of their illness and defect in DNA we understand, and care for them. Here I am not specifically talking about unconditional forgiveness. I am just emphasis on understanding as a part to achieve completeness. Thank you for raising a challenging question, this is what it meant to be a blog :)!

I wish to continue the discussion about the flaw and forgiveness here which is impossible to discuss many things in the article I have written. There are things we cannot control in life but there are things we can control in life. For example being a woman or a man is determined by our DNA, and further there are a lot of complex inter winding human behaviors control by our DNA. It’s very difficult to determine the goods and the flaws, since one flaw might strengthen other goods, or one good might amplify other flaws. Take again Autism as the example, these people are quite common highly focused and developed in either arts or mathematics, this trait also make them somehow detached from communicating with people, or may be because there are afraid of communicating with people, that’s make them highly focused on doing something. However, for them to be developed in either arts or mathematics, probably they need loving parents. So the probability of having very loving parents now is taken into account into what we call fate. The point is, other people’s short comings can be due to a series of unfortunate events in life, and as we achieve more understanding in life, we stand by the unfortunate people’s side to give them the help whenever they need it, and not to despise them. Somehow, this also relates to forgiveness, but due to understanding.

Autistic people need loving parents yet know how to strengthen their lackness. Unfortunate events do affect people a lot. Indeed that unfortunate people need help. I can understand that a lot. Most likely, autistic people sometimes don’t know how to find the right words to talk to people. But they can perform well in their works.

I have read a few articles about autism in the past, and more importantly I wish to point out not so often some ‘shortcomings’ in ‘normal’ human can be easily traced to having problem with their DNA, even more difficult to understand what kind of childhood they may have gone through. So, it is important to be forgiving, but they are different ways of forgiving, some may lead to good results, some may not.

In another situation, if I am a boss and I have the subordinate who has made a series of mistakes. There are multiples way involving forgiveness (not only to o others but also to ourselves). Firstly, if a subordinate made a series of mistakes chances are I am the main problem in the leadership, so I need to analyze the situation carefully and don’t blame the staff. Secondly, I don’t have to fire the staff, but I can appoint another one who can complete the job, may be the one making the mistake was not suitable to handle the job (which is also my leadership problem). Thirdly, don’t fire him. and give him/her a chance, and train the staff until he is really good (unless she/he is willing to give up herself/himself). So the methods above all involve forgiveness in a different way. What do you think?

Of course, the above methods involve forgiveness yet compassionate heart. Sometimes, it will help to let the subordinate work in another department or need guidance. Most first time employee need to have someone to guide them. Except if the subordinate doesn’t have the enthusiasm to work.

There is one point missing here, forgiveness in this situation involve forgiveness not only to the subordinate, but to forgive ourself too. If we think more carefully, and if we discover some unforeseen factors, we might help the staff to avoid mistakes. Or may be the mistakes are unexpected, and these mistakes would further help the management and business if we take them positively. Again the big picture is to analyze things from different angles and perspectives (i.e. with understanding, the light and the shadow together) before we may apply appropriate forgiveness to bring good results for us and the subordinate.